Last week I used up the last remaining days and hours of my holidays from work, I went with my wife on a bit of a road trip to Paignton, Torquay, Plymouth, Land’s End, Sennen, and Weston Super Mare. We arrived home late on the Friday then I needed to get ready all of my kit that I required to carry out my shoot on the saturday. I’d selected to reshoot Dudley Zoo architecture designed by the Tecton Group and was going to take my Bronica ETRS 645 medium format camera with its 75mm lens.
When I awoke on the Saturday, I knew that I would have to shoot everything I needed on this day as I would be busy on the Sunday, picking up my daughter from Heathrow after returning from a wonderful veterinary trip to South Africa at 5am. I selected the three rolls of Lomography Redscale XR (50-200) from my film drawer along with a roll of Ilford HP5+ and a part used roll of same film in a film back already. I packed this into my camera backpack along with the Canon 5D MkIV as I wanted to capture some backup digital images in case I used the Lomo film incorrectly and came away with zero. I also had my Leica M6 in the bag that had six frames of Ilford Delta 3200 remaining on it so thought I might use this up.
We’re Going To The Zoo Zoo Zoo
Into the car with everything packed up and off to the zoo, it’s about an hour drive from Shrewsbury and I’d worked out that it was cheaper to park at the zoo, £3.50, than to park in town and walk to the zoo, like last time I went. Upon entering the busy entrance and shop, I realised that I hadn’t got any photos of the front of the Zoo entrances with the wavy concrete over the turnstiles, so I calculated that I’d need to keep 3 or 4 frames to revisit that after the rest of the zoo.
The cost for me to enter was £19.50 with my Student Art Pass and the car park was a further £3.50, so I coughed up the green and then went on a merry wander. My objective today was to not get sidetracked by people or animals but to focus solely on the concrete architecture designed and installed by Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton group some 87 years prior. In my last trip (Black Country Wander) I had missed out a couple of structures, not finding the second kiosk or the bear ravine structures. To overcome this I spent a little more time in the weeks beforehand trying to work out where these items were and how I’d come to miss them originally. I took some books from the University Of Wolverhampton’s Harrison Library to help me with more detail on the structure, design, reasons and general info on the structures and how they came to be a part of the Dudley Zoological Gardens (as it was known back then).
The first Berthold Lubetkin by John Allen and the second, Lubetkin and Tecton, Architecture and Social Commitment by Peter Coe and Malcolm Reading.
These books both hold clues as to where the items I seek are located so with the knowledge under my belt I went for a walk.
I Saw The Light
Out of the entrance I turned about face and made some frames of the building I’d just exited which would have been “Cafe 1” when first created. There is some lovely concrete texture here on the face and on the edges of the roof slab. There is some great text on the building too in a wonderful and simplistic typeface but I’m not sure yet what it is. I’ll need to discover this if I can. The photos underneath are from my phone to capture the shutter speed and aperture of the Bronica as I would normally write it down but this felt less faffy. The shot of the camera is to see the settings and the immediate next shot shows the content of the frame I’d just shot.
The settings are selected based upon the recommendations from my Sekonic Light Meter used for incidental metering in the area of where the photo is aimed. You can see the shutter release cable screwed into the side of the centre unit of the camera too, as I was expecting to have slower than usual shutter speeds so wanted to mount on tripod and use cable release to reduce the blurring caused by pressing the on-camera shutter button.
Waiting At The Gate
The shot I made of this corner of the concrete entrance, or the old Cafe 1, was shot on 1/30th second shutter speed with an aperture set to f/16, the lens remains the undamaged (as of yet) 75mm f/2.8 Zenzanon lens and the ISO set to 200 with the Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 film within the camera back, I’ll wait to see what the images come out like and look back to these settings to see if I need to do anything differently. I usually shoot with the AE II prism viewfinder that has an internal meter and automatic exposure settings but I wanted to return to using the waist level viewfinder and the magnifier as last time I used it, I got my hair off when I couldn’t figure out how to move the camera to alter the framing. It’s ok when it’s flat and level but when it’s in Portrait mode, tipped on its side, everything goes to hell in a hand cart.
Moving from the main building it was time to look at the inward side of the turnstiles and take a couple of images here. Again the images below aren’t the final photos, I’m waiting for these to come back from AG Photolab.
The camera shows the settings as 1/10th second at f/16 for both of these scenes and I spent some time here waiting for the traffic behind the turnstiles to be empty and even did a shot looking more abstractly at the concrete wavy slab atop the entrance way.
Moral Kiosk
Then it was up the hill, past the Flamingos and other animals until I reached the Kiosk that I’d seen last time I was here but I was happy to see that the information boards provided some of the same information that appears in the books I had borrowed from the Uni library. For this shot I walked up onto the grass bank in front of the kiosk and after a few confused looks from other zoo goers as to what I was photographing “I can’t see any animals there!”, said one, I got on with the task.
The light meter was telling me to shoot at f/11 with a 1/8th second shutter speed so this is what I did. I also played around on a couple of future shots shots if I wanted more or less depth of field, by changing the parameters, the Sekonic will do it for you if you press the up and down button but it’s easy to work out in your brain too. For instance a shot of 1/8th second at f/11 will give the same exposure as 1/15th second on f/8 or even 1/4 of a second on f/16. You can see below that the information boards are pretty grubby and could do with a bit of a wipe, but at least its there and ready to inform anyone who reads it. Over the period of the day from around 11am ’til 4:45pm I saw no other patron of the zoo looking at any of these boards, with some even deriding them as “boring stuff about the buildings.”
The next two iPhone photos show a general gist of the angle that I took the next two images from. The settings were jiggled about for these two with one being 1/125 at f/2.8 and the other being 1sec at f/11 just through light changes and where the scene was important to catch the focussed point and nothing else beyond or the whole gamut from front to back. I wanted to try this to see what difference it made when I get the scans back from AG.
Songs For Polar Bears
From the Kiosk 1 it was time to head to the Polar Bear Pit with the Lion and Tiger Ravine each side of it. There were a number of visitors here so I chose to include some in the images, as I also think it provided a good bit of scale comparison for the photograph.
Shot at f/11 and 1/60th second the image should capture a bit of depth with reasonable stillness in the people in the photo. I waited for walkers to move through frame and press shutter release only when those left standing in the frame were pretty much stationary. The images beneath show the info baord with the original layout of the polar bear pit and then the slightly less well attended Arctic Fox pit that is there today. In the third image you can see the ETRS on my Manfrotto tripod with the Shutter release cable hanging down. I liked this image as you can see the light from the viewfinder through the lens.
The next three shots are of the same part of the site but a section off to the side. There are posters showing the history of the site and I thought that it looked like the black and white image of the polar bear was trying to leap over the fence atop the wall. It also encompasses the features I like about this architecture, the curves, corners and lines. The three photos represent the naked eye of the scene, the view through the waist level finder (WLF) and then the magnifier on the WLF. You can see the screen in the WLF and how it is reversed from the scene in front of you. The AE II prism viewfinder has a prism or two in it so that the images are reversed and flipped to represent what is actually in front of you, but I was leaving that in my bag today as a challenge. It also meant that I couldn’t rely on the in-built meter for automatic exposure settings.
With that shot in the bag I moved the camera around to find another perspective, I do like shooting multiple angles and abstract details from the scene as it otherwise can get boring. I shot the next image through a gap in concrete wall and concrete rail up some stairs to capture the lines and curves beyond. You can see the image as I did through the magnifier in the WLF. Note the leaves providing some context of the season that this was made in also as well as the fence supports which remind me of periscopes used in the trenches of World War One. It’s almost as if the animals beneath are spying on the visitors to work out when they should go and hide…
Birdhouse In Your Soul
The tour continued and I walked away from the pits mentioned above to find the “Tropical Bird House” which is no longer used for the purpose, but is a closed off building that sits atop the banked area holding the Asiatic Lions. On the way down the stairs from the Polar Bear enclosure I turned around and saw this structure. It held some photos and some explanatory text abou tthe Tecton buildings at the zoo but like the info boards they were tired and I wonder if anyone actually ever looks at them. You can see the images on the wall on the building that is used for guest toilets.
After reaching the Bird House I lined up a shot on the grass near the kids play area and noticed there was a wheelie bin in the mid ground so I wheeled it backwards into the hedge before shooting it and then moving the bin back once again. It was already a busy foreground with a picnic table and I didn’t fancy a bin in there too. Normally I’d leave a scene alone and not fiddle with it but figured it was a wheeled bin, it was supposed to move, right? The other two shots beneath are views through the WLF and magnifier of some other angles I made photos of. It is an interesting construction and it’s sad to see it sitting there wasting away underutilised.
Bear Necessities
Last time I was here I moved from this bird house into the Lemur Wood but I did not make the same amateur mistake this time. From my studying of the Map and books I had learned that there was a small path, unsuitable for mobility scooters, prams and wheeled walkers that led down to my biggest smile of the day. The “Bear Ravine” was laid out in front of me and was a magnificent piece of structural design and work. Alongside here was also the second “Kiosk” I had missed previously.
I spent ages moving around this area, shooting all different aspects and abstracts, finding also that, unexpectedly, the steps were open to allow visitors to walk up on top of the structures that now tower over the “Reindeer Ravine”, animals that another surprised guest thought, (I overheard her partner taking the mickey), were “normal deer with reins on for Santa Claus’ sleigh.”
Some of the views from the Ravine were similar to scenes from “The Longest Day” about the Allies incursion into the Nazi’s Atlantic Defences on D-Day. The concrete and the openings were bunker like and the angles reminded me very much of Normandy structures, that I’ve seen on the internet or in books. (Never having been there yet, which as a fan of concrete is a bit remiss)
After dropping back down from the Ravine I focussed on the Kiosk for a while. This version had been painted red on the base and then the underside of the canopy was a blue, same as the blue on the entrance turnstiles.
Some of the images on this page are captured using my iPhone 13 Pro ( I know it’s old now) and some using my Canon 5D Mk IV, like the one beneath. I didn’t want to risk not having any photos if I messed up the film photos so I was capturing images like this on the 5D.
Ramblin Man
I had a walk around the rest of the places I wanted to visit, including the Oak Kitchen which was originally the “Restaurant” and the Discovery Centre which was the “Moat Cafe”.
The original “Reptilliary” which now houses meerkats and the Sea Lion pool were also photographed along the way but it was around now I realised that I had made an error with my digital camera. I had assumed that I had the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 lens mounted and never thought to check, I was only using it as a back up anyway, but then once I’d realised this I worked out that I had been frustrated by how little of the scenes I was able to capture, particularly on the Bear Ravine and Polar Bear Pit earlier. I set the bag down, and then proceeded to swap over the currently mounted 24-105 f/4 for the 16-35 and then headed back to the areas I’d messed up on. On the way I stopped by the Orangutan enclosure but couldn’t find a good angle on the Bronica so saved the frames for the front entrance. I was into the final of the three Lomo Redscale XR films so couldn’t use many more, especially if I didn’t have a nice angle.
You can see from the above images that the wide angle and f/2.8 allowed me more light, even though it was getting darker and I was able to capture far more of the scene that I was with the 24mm max on the other lens. I kicked myself for this, heavily. But not as heavily as I kicked myself for the issue I was about to face when I rested my Bronica on the tripod with legs open whilst taking a digital photo of the Bear Ravine. As I was snapping away with the wide angle lens, there was. bang and clatter and the bronica was on the deck with the tripod. I’d put the tripod out correctly but not really paid attention to being on a steep hill, the camera had overbalanced and toppled. The front filter ring of the 75mm lens took a smack and the corner of the plastic on the WLF had a little chip but all seemed to work fine. I’m glad at this point that the AE II metered viewfinder was in the bag as I suspect this would have smashed that to bits.
The light was fading, I was knackered and I felt it was time to go and capture the front of the turnstiles whilst there was still a little light remaining. I headed for the exit and captured a few more wide angle digital shots along the way. I was still livid that I’d dropped my Bronica and that I’d fouled up the lens choice on the 5D but all was working out well, hopefully. I passed the chair lift that was closed and noticed that this was on the Elephant House structure which I hadn’t spotted n the previous visit.
As I was leaving the front entrance for the car park, I noticed the back of the Entrance Building “Cafe 1” and took a shot of this as it also had a funky concrete roof atop it. After researching online I can see that this building used to be a night club called Krush, many years ago. I’m glad it has been returned to the Zoo use as it will hopefully last a bit longer like this.
Don’t Look Back In Anger
I am looking forward to seeing what the Redscale film produces, after it started dropping dark I started overexposing by one stop or two as I’d read and heard that this film likes light and is able to handle it better than other films. My Bronica films in the past have sometimes turned out under-exposed but I chose to calculate the exposure this time using the Sekonic to remove the risk that the AE II was causing an issue.
I can’t believe I let the Bronica tip over and that I was careless enough to not notice the difference between a 24-105 and 16-35. Lessons learned. I also had forgotten to take a strap for the 5D so I had to moutn the peak design plate to it and hang it on the quick release plate on my backpack strap to allow me to better use the Bronica.
The lighting and metering was a challenge, as well as dealing with people in photos or kids photobombing. I never got wound up by this as I still try and photobomb when I walk through someone’s shot, if they are a snapshot style photographer.
The time I spent reading up about the second visit paid dividends and has given me some research work to do and use in citations etc should it be needed. Looking at other’s works on the Tecton buildings at Dudley Zoo leads me to find few in the usual places who celebrate what is an extensive collection of important architectural works and I’ll be happy if the images come back in a good fashion.
I also didn’t ask permission to photograph in the zoo, almost everyone is snapping photos on their phones so didn’t think it would be a big issue. Just the fact I was using a tripod might have been a problem but I was polite and said hello to the staff when they walked past and nothing was said about me photographing at all. the old saying of “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” might hold some weight on this matter as I figure that if I’d asked it might have been policy to say no to tripods etc. I’m not necessarily using the images in a commercial sense, only for University research and possible exhibition so I don’t feel that I am committing any real menace.
Crossing my fingers that the images come back ok, I’ve submitted seven films to AG, the three Lomo Redscale, the remainder of the Ilford HP5+ that I shot around the Bear Ravine and then three 35mm films that I’d shot on a road trip to Land’s End and the back end of the Delta 3200 which was shot in the zoo also.
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